Confronting potential competition from both municipal Wi-Fi and WiMAX, Verizon Wireless is reacting by cutting the price of its evolution-data optimized (EV-DO) wireless broadband service by 25 percent, from $79.99 per month to $59.99, reports Red Herring. In a similar move, last week Verizon Wireless's parent company Verizon announced a low-end landline DSL service for less than $15 a month.

Verizon began to sell high-speed services based on EV-DO technology to laptop computer users in some markets in 2003 and plans to expand to cover 150 million people by year-end, reports Reuters. Sprint Nextel and Cingular Wireless are planning similar high-speed services.

Early adopters consider the new price of the wireless broadband service inexpensive, but most consumers are likely to still consider it too high. EV-DO is a wireless communications technology that provides speeds of between 300 and 600 kbps, or 10 times the speed of dial-up, and can work with cell phones.

Some local governments say that the major carriers have priced large segments of the population out of the broadband market, so they plan to construct their own - and because wireless networks require the least amount of construction upheaval, many municipalities are looking to deploy wireless broadband.